Munich

Gannon: life sciences need a single voice.

A group of leading European molecular biologists is to launch a new initiative, called the European Life Sciences Forum (ELSF), to present a united view to politicians of the needs of the basic research community in Europe.

Frank Gannon, director of the Heidelberg-based European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), told the Munich Symposium on Cell Dynamics last week that the forum was necessary because of the fragmentation of the community's voice.

This fragmentation had weakened the impact of researchers on the European Union's fifth five-year Framework programme of research (FP5), which started this year, he said. “EMBO was one of very many life sciences organizations in Europe which individually advised the European Commission on how it should structure the programme, yet we saw no evidence of EMBO's input in the final design.”

Given the “exponentially increasing” economic and social importance of life sciences, and the increasing demands of the biotechnology industry for advances in basic research, the life sciences need “a step up in funding, not incremental increases, as is currently the case in Europe,” said Gannon.

One of the first tasks of ELSF, whose manifesto will be published on the Internet, will be to establish dialogue with the European Commission and coordinate a single input into the sixth Framework programme on behalf of all European basic researchers in the life sciences when such discussions begin in the next two years.

Don Cleveland, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, told the Munich meeting that a recent commitment to doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health by the US Congress had been largely due to a campaign by scientists in the US societies for cell biology, biochemistry and biophysics.

Ten years ago, said Cleveland, when the American Society of Cell Biology was still very small, it started to spend a significant proportion of its budget on paying a full-time member of staff to “worry about public advocacy”, as well as the services of a professional lobbyist in Washington. “At the time, some scientists said we were spending too much,” he said. “But it paid off.”

Other scientists at the meeting pointed to the success of Greenpeace's well-funded campaigns in Europe —such as that against genetically modified foods — which they said urgently needed to be matched by similarly competent campaigns by scientists.

Gannon pointed out that the task of lobbying is more complicated in Europe than in the United States. “We have to lobby in ten different languages and in twice as many political centres of power,” he said.

But he said that scientists had themselves to blame for inadequate funding of life sciences in Europe “because we have never been able to come up with the simple sort of message that politicians can understand and convey to their constituents”.